Party Towns

Boston And New York, Rivals In Things Other Than Baseball, Get Ready For A Stampede Of Donkeys And Elephants.

July 25, 2004|By Dale Koppel special correspondent

special correspondent The Democratic National Convention begins in Boston on Monday. How perfect, this being, of course, John Kerry Country.

There's quite a bit of Kerry Country in Massachusetts. The presidential candidate likes to hunt -- dove and quail, occasionally deer -- on the seven-mile Naushon Island. This is one of the chain of Elizabeth Islands off the Cape that is owned by the Forbes family (so it's off-limits to you) from which Kerry is descended (the "F" in John F. Kerry stands for Forbes, not, as some would like to think, Fitzgerald).

The Kerrys also spend time in the Hulbert Avenue house on Nantucket, though it's solely owned by the Mrs. -- philanthropist Teresa Heinz (as in ketchup) Kerry.

The best place to experience Kerry Country -- and the closest to the convention site, the FleetCenter in downtown -- is on Boston's Beacon Hill, with its brick and cobblestone streets, gaslights that are lit 24 hours, and strict historic preservation codes.

It's the south slope of the hill, built in the first half of the 19th century, that most people think of when they hear, "Beacon Hill." That's where the Boston Brahmins resided, a class defined in 1860 by Oliver Wendell Holmes as that "harmless, inoffensive, untitled aristocracy" with their "houses by [Charles] Bulfinch, their monopoly on Beacon Street, their ancestral portraits and Chinese porcelains, humanitarianism, Unitarian faith in the march of the mind, Yankee shrewdness, and New England exclusiveness."

Hilly streets like Mount Vernon, Chestnut and Beacon boast Bulfinch's best work. Tiny Acorn Street is the most photographed street in America, mostly because of its architecture and its original cobblestones. Henry James called the area of Mount Vernon Street between the State House and Louisburg Square "the most civilized street in America."

No. 13 Louisburg Square is where the Kerrys reside -- in one of the oldest and most spectacular townhouses on the square. For more than 100 years it was part of a convent for the Society of St. Margaret's. Then, in 1993, because it seemed unseemly to be living in such a posh neighborhood, the Episcopal nuns sold it to a local developer who, three years later, sold it to the Kerrys for $1.7 million.

The house has eight lavatories, five bathtubs, six restored masonry fireplaces, and is currently valued at $12.8 million, making it one of the most expensive of its kind in Boston. Federal law allows candidates to borrow against the value of their assets. The house was appraised late last year, so that Kerry -- a 50 percent owner with his spouse -- could borrow against it to make a $6.4 million loan to his campaign.

Besides Kerry, author Robin Cook lives in Louisburg Square, as did Louisa May and Bronson Alcott, Ted Kennedy, and -- at 29A Chestnut St., with its purple windows that came from an 1820 shipment of manganese-contaminated glass from Hamburg -- actor Edwin Booth, at the time that his brother John Wilkes assassinated Abraham Lincoln. It is said that Christmas caroling got its start on Louisburg Square in the late 19th century.

You can identify Kerry's house because it's on the corner of Pinckney Street, on the west side of the square. It's also the only house with an American flag. Approximately 20 houses sit to the east and west of the verdant square flanked by statues of Aristedes and Columbus, and off-limits to the public.

Pinckney Street was, historically, the dividing line between the south and the north slopes, between rich and poor, white and black. But in 1878, John J. Smith, a black civic leader and member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, crossed the line and bought the house at 86 Pinckney, at the corner of West Cedar Street. The African Meeting House, on Joy Street, is the oldest standing black church in America. It was built in 1806 and housed the first black school in Boston. Today, it's the location of the Museum of Afro-American History.

Check out Holmes Alley, at the end of Smith Court. It's a private way but visitors are permitted because it's part of the Black Heritage Trail and still representative of the warren of alleys and mews on the north slope in the 17th and 18th centuries. This was an important stopover for slaves on their way to Canada.

The State House, on Beacon and Bowdoin (pronounced Bowdin) streets, is considered Beacon Hill's crowning glory with its impressive 23-carat gold leaf dome. Completed in 1798, its cornerstone had been laid three years earlier, on the Fourth of July, by Samuel Adams and Paul Revere. Its gilding began in 1861 and was finished in 1872. It was painted black during World War II so as not to be visible to enemy planes.

One might call the Boston Common and the Public Garden that border Beacon Hill part of the hill's picturesque setting. Set aside in 1634, the Boston Common (you can just say Common) is the nation's oldest public park. Walk to the center and you'll find the Frog Pond, a wading pool in summer and, in the winter, a free skating rink.